The Methodology behind Our Courageous Culture: My Powerful Purpose
Our Courageous Culture: My Powerful Purpose (nicknamed “the purpose workshop”) is a patchwork and profound experience that stitches together storytelling, psychology, and thought leadership. Based on decades of professional expertise and hands-on experience, this workshop combines Corey Blake’s love for storytelling with central techniques in the leadership and psychology world, including the renowned Gestalt Institute and the Meisner methodology.
Whether you have already completed the purpose workshop or haven’t yet but are interested in understanding a little more about our approach, we’ve provided below a detailed history of the purpose workshop, including how it originated and what methods have helped to shape it along the way.
The Origins of Our Purpose Methodology
The purpose workshop uses a proprietary methodology invented by Corey Blake and Round Table Companies (RTC). The steps in the workshop itself were developed over several years, beginning in 2016, through in-person workshops and keynotes Corey delivered at Conscious Capitalism, Conscious Company Magazine, Small Giants, YPO, and EO events around the country.
The workshop process has been influenced by Corey’s decades-long study of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, his study of presence work through the Meisner acting methodology in the early 2000s, his education in deepening others’ understanding of themselves through Gestalt therapy from 2014 through 2016, and his training in leadership at the Stagen Leadership Academy where he has studied since 2015 and is currently adjunct faculty for the Advanced Leadership Program (ALP).
Corey’s method has also been influenced and shaped by the approach he developed as the basis of RTC’s book development process for guiding thought leaders and CEOs in writing the book they were born to write, a service RTC offered from 2006 until 2022, and for which they garnered 17 independent publishing awards.
In Collaboration with Creative Minds
In his work with Sunny DiMartino on the concept and execution of Vulnerability Walls beginning in 2015—and erected for companies including Microsoft, ADP, Workday, and Marketo—Corey furthered his understanding of the collision moment and his artistic approach to transforming pain into beauty and connection, which he, Sunny, and the RTC team explored further in their creation of the Vulnerability is Sexy™ card game released in 2016.
Corey’s exploration of the long-form story version of the purpose statement continued in 2020, in collaboration with Kelsey Schurer, on the 12-week Story Hero course, whose graduates have gone on to collect nearly 2 million stories. This became the basis for today’s purpose workshop experience.
A New Framework
Corey’s fascination with large sets of data and RTC’s collection of hundreds of deeply personal responses (collected from participants within the purpose workshop), has led to the development of a new framework for personality assessment. Corey’s working hypothesis is that what we most wish to experience in this world can be articulated across four categories: achievement, safety and security, service, and freedom. Similarly, that which we most want to avoid can be articulated across another four categories: isolation, paralysis, intense emotion, and control. Since every human being’s story relies on the tension between that which they most desire and that which they most fear, everyone falls into one of the 16 combinations of categories:
Freedom / Isolation
Freedom / Control
Freedom / Intense Emotion
Freedom / Paralysis
Achievement / Isolation
Achievement / Control
Achievement / Intense Emotion
Achievement / Paralysis
Safety and Security / Isolation
Safety and Security / Control
Safety and Security / Intense Emotion
Safety and Security / Paralysis
Service / Isolation
Service / Control
Service / Intense Emotion
Service / Paralysis
Each of these categories distinctly defines a core “personality” type about who we are in relation to what we most want to experience and what we most want to avoid in this world.
In Collaboration with Artificial Intelligence
With the newer accessibility of AI, Corey, Kelsey, and RTC are now utilizing artificial intelligence to create customized reporting for each of the 16 personality types in the model, with further personalization based on the unique language shared by each workshop participant.